The Rabbit Back Literature Society (5 page)

The Rabbit Back Literature Society celebratory gathering had attracted cultural types from far and wide, the farthest flung, it was said, coming all the way from Japan.

Nearly all of them were unknown to author Martti Winter, and he didn’t want to know them.

The Rabbit Back Popular Orchestra was playing in a corner
of the drawing-room—the pensive bass flirting with the dreamy saxophone and piano. Caterers wandered about offering wine, cognac, and hors d’oeuvres.

In addition to the drawing-room there were other downstairs rooms full of guests. Some stood in groups, laughing loudly, others stood in corners gossiping. The ones who had never been to Laura White’s house before admired the paintings gleaming on the walls and the dark-hued furnishings.

No one ventured upstairs. It was understood to be the
private
quarters of the lady of the house. Some of the downstairs rooms were locked as well.

“Where is Ms White, anyway?” someone behind Martti Winter asked.

He turned and saw that it was Ella Milana speaking. She was fiddling with the straps of her gown, which were clearly too thin and too tight.

Winter knew very well that everyone was there because Ella Milana, the petite young teacher who stood before him, had been made a member of the Rabbit Back Literature Society. The place was swarming with envious amateur authors, their envy barely checked by their instinctive deference. She was the long-awaited Tenth Member.

These amateur authors were themselves envied, for of the hundreds of amateur authors in the district, they were the ones who’d been honoured with an invitation to the party. The majority had received prizes in writing competitions within the last few years or had stories in the literary supplement that were considered above average.

Martti Winter touched Ella Milana’s arm with his fingertips. Her arm was thin, her skin dry and hot.

“She must still be upstairs, in her room, probably,” he said. “Don’t worry, you’ll get to meet her when the time comes. Then you’ll be officially introduced and so on.”

People crowded around them. Three loud-voiced women stood closest. Winter had learned and forgotten their names. A youngish man bounced around among them, a writer for
Rabbit Tracks
. Or was he from some Helsinki paper? Winter had heard that there would be someone from
Finland Illustrated
at the party.

Winter was about to move aside when someone tapped him on the shoulder. He remembered the journalist’s name now: Esko Hartavala.

Hartavala said he had read Winter’s most recent novel,
Mr Butterfly
. He enquired whether Winter had ever felt the same temptation as the novel’s main character to dress in women’s clothes. “I don’t mean to offend. I only ask because the inner thoughts of the main character are described so incredibly intensely, in such an achingly personal voice, that it’s hard to believe anyone could have invented him entirely out of whole cloth.”

The journalist rested one hand on Winter’s shoulder and waved the other excitedly in the air. The waving hand held a cigarette, the ash of which dropped onto the front of Winter’s jacket.

“I would be happy to take credit for all of the wonderful experiences I describe in my novels, but my life isn’t quite that rich. Unfortunately we authors are sometimes forced to use other people’s lives, too.”

“Sounds rather beastly,” the journalist laughed. “Or maybe writers are like vultures. Some people feel we journalists are.” He mimicked a bird of prey and grinned.

Winter wondered whether they were having a conversation or conducting an interview. He stretched his lips in an
expression
reminiscent of a hungry crocodile and lifted the journalist’s hand from his shoulder.

He then flicked the ashes from his jacket one by one.

“I confess that gathering material can sometimes have the flavour of a hunt,” he said. “Even the best cook can’t make chicken soup out of his own feet. There aren’t so terribly many ingredients in anyone’s life, less meat than there is on a sparrow. The average person could come up with at most two good novels. Many who think very highly of themselves can’t manage more than a couple of anecdotes.”

The journalist made a sound. Winter patted his arm, smiled warmly, and said, “It is sad, I know. In any case, if you want to write a bit more than that, your own experiences aren’t enough. By the time you get to the third novel you’re going to have to throw in a few pinches of someone else’s life.”

The journalist nodded and moved away, looking for an easier conversation.

“Why do I feel like I was a great disappointment to that poor fellow?” Winter wondered aloud, causing a burst of laughter around him.

One of the women laughed particularly loudly, shuffled a few steps towards him and touched his lips with her fingertips. “Maybe you frightened him. Tell me, am I in any danger of being used if I come too close, oh great and terrifying author?”

A dense cloud of perfume wafted around her.

“Go ahead and try,” Winter said, somewhat wearily. “Open up to me. Reveal something interesting about yourself, and I’ll use it when I need it. If I need it. Altered for my own purposes.”

“How will you alter me?”

“Well… I might turn those curls of yours black and make you fatter or thinner by ten kilos or so, whatever comes to me. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll change one of your eyes, perhaps this left one, into a glass eye.”

The woman’s mouth dropped open. “Huh?”

Winter smiled.

“Or I might give you a wooden leg, or some kind of disease. How does syphilitic brain damage sound? Or maybe I’ll have you broken in two in an auto accident.”

She gave a shrill laugh. “You are truly awful!” she said. “I’m not telling you anything now, or I might end up in your next novel.”

Winter gave a slight bow.

“That is your right. It would no doubt put you in much less danger of being used. But I may nevertheless steal your way of moving, the expressions on your face! Perhaps I’ll even take that way you have of smiling with your mouth open, your little tongue peeking out now and then between your teeth to see what’s happening in the world. And those freckles that start on the bridge of your nose and continue all the way down between your breasts, that’s a detail that might come in handy in a piece I’m writing at the moment.”

The woman smiled, frightened. “You’ll eat me alive.”

She grabbed a companion by the arm and started lisping like a little girl. “Oh, won’t you please be a nice man-eating lion and let me go if I tell you a juicy story about my friend here?”

Winter looked at her apologetically. “I’m sorry, but I don’t bargain with my material.”

Martti Winter had recently had a birthday. He’d turned
forty-three
. For his birthday celebration, he’d ordered a large chocolate cake covered in marzipan roses. He hadn’t told anyone about his birthday. He ate the cake himself.

The baker said that it was a cake for twenty. It had lasted Winter two days and one night.

Winter didn’t smoke. He was a sober man nowadays—
drinking
was too much trouble. Alcohol didn’t suit him. Drunkenness had lost its charm. He’d given up sex with other people for the same reasons.

His new habit, eating, replaced both drinking and sex. He weighed well over 150 kilos.

When people talked about the famous author, their
comments
generally went something like, “What of it? Why not enjoy life, right? If you like good food, why not eat your fill?”

Martti Winter was no gourmand. He didn’t have expensive tastes, didn’t like Chinese food or care to hear about French cuisine. He hated shellfish, caviar, and complicated seafood dishes. He never drank wine with dinner. He liked to eat simple, uncomplicated foods: chocolate, pastries, ground beef, French fries, macaroni, chocolate mousse and sausage.

He found his way to the buffet table and started to eat a cream pastry topped with three green cherries and flakes of chocolate. The filling was marzipan.

He remembered that the woman with the freckles was an amateur actor in Rabbit Back. She was the fourth hanger-on he’d fended off that evening. There was a time when he’d
positively
collected actresses. There was something quite special about them—they seemed more complete and clear than other women and at the same time unreal. But it had been a
long time since he’d had it in him to really react to a woman’s sexual signals.

He had noticed the moisture on the actress’s lips, sensed the shape of her flesh, smelled the perfume that only partly succeeded in concealing the aroma she naturally secreted. In theory, he would have liked to bed many of the women he met. In practice, sex with a stranger was rather laborious, messy and tiresome. He would have to look people in the eye whom he would prefer not to know if he saw them in line at the market or the corner kiosk.

Besides, Winter liked to keep his body private. It was like an untidy room—it was indecorous to invite strangers to see it. He didn’t really think of his bloated form as his own anymore. It was thus natural that he didn’t want to be seen with it.

He had adjusted to his fatness, of course. It was annoying that at this point he could no longer see his penis. If he tried to pee standing up he had to aim blind and usually wet the floor, and his shoes. A couple of days earlier he had thoughtlessly undressed in front of the mirror and recoiled at the sight of a large, leathery orangutan. In an expensive suit, however, he did look presentable. It gave his roundness a sort of dignity. He was convinced that it was best that he remain dressed in the company of others.

Winter turned once more towards his companions, excused himself, and withdrew to the bathroom. It was spacious but dark. A curved bathtub loomed at the other end of the room, white with copper legs.

Years ago, a young Martti Winter had walked into this same bathroom, and the memory returned to him now.

He’s spent the entire Sunday at Laura White’s house doing writing
exercises. He comes into the bathroom deep in thought, pulls down his zipper—then suddenly realizes that he’s not alone, because at the other end of the room, lying in a tub full of water with her eyes closed is the writer, Laura White, naked. Horrified at the sacrilege he’s committed, he tries to quiet the pounding in his chest that’s making the whole room tremble, until the water in the tub splashes on the floor
.

Did she really open her eyes and look at the intruder? Did she smile at the boy mischievously and then close her eyes again?

Winter might have seen that happen but he didn’t know anymore, not for sure. He had seen it in dreams hundreds of times and every dream was different.

He walked over to the bathtub, opened his fly, did a little work and let his seed run over the white porcelain. Then he ran water in the tub and watched the black hole at the bottom swallow the evidence.

He washed his hands and face, checked his hair in the mirror, and walked out.